


Radiance

by ImpishTubist



Series: Regeneration [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Angst, Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-08
Updated: 2014-02-08
Packaged: 2018-01-11 11:05:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1172297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpishTubist/pseuds/ImpishTubist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had been fifty-three days since he'd last seen the stars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Radiance

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place during the VOY episode "Night."

Chakotay could see the stars from Greg’s quarters.

He stood there frozen on the threshold for several long moments, staring at the windows, blinking hard in an effort to dispel what had to be a hallucination.

Greg appeared in the doorway of the bedroom, dressed only in pajama bottoms. He shrugged on a black t-shirt and raked a hand through his hair. Chakotay had obviously woken him, which hadn’t been his intention. He sometimes forgot that there were people on the ship - most of the crew, in fact - who kept better hours than he did. Not everyone was awake at two in the morning.

Not that day and night really mattered out in the vacuum of space, where there were no sunrises and sunsets to govern their days. It mattered even less here, in the Void, where the radiation was so thick that even the stars weren’t visible.

Except in Greg’s quarters, apparently. Because for the first time in fifty-three days, Chakotay was looking at the stars.

“These,” Chakotay breathed finally, “must have cost you a fortune in rations.”

Greg gave a thin smile. The fact that he was able to smile at all astounded Chakotay. He wasn’t sure if he remembered the muscle movements anymore himself.

“Not really,” he said quietly. Greg always spoke quietly. Chakotay wasn’t sure if that was natural or a facet of his new existence; the born-again man who was getting his second chance at life.

A second chance he’d never asked for or wanted.

Chakotay crossed the room to the windows, and he reached out a hand to finger the curtains. Greg took it in his own and gently pulled it away.

“Stop,” he said softly. “You’ll spoil the illusion. Come on.”

He tugged on Chakotay’s hand, leading him over to the couch, and pushed him onto it. He had turned the piece of furniture so that it was facing the windows, and when he dimmed the lights in the room, Chakotay could almost imagine that he was truly looking out at the stars.

“Something on your mind?” Greg asked as he moved towards the replicator. “I wasn’t expecting you until after your shift tomorrow.”

“I saw Kathryn today,” Chakotay said when the silence stretched on. Not that silence was ever a problem when he was around Greg, but lately even here he was finding it unnerving. He had so much of it in the rest of his life - on duty, on the Bridge - that he couldn’t stand it in his personal time, either.

“I see.” Greg replicated their usual teas and handed Chakotay his before sitting next to him on the couch. “I figured it must have been something like that.”

“Have I really been that bad lately?” Chakotay asked with a sigh. He sipped the tea, relishing the way it scalded the roof of his mouth. At this point, feeling _anything_ was momentous for him, even if it was pain.

“No,” Greg said gently, “of course not. You’re handling this whole situation better than anyone else I’ve seen.”

“Except you,” Chakotay said. “How do you manage it?”

Greg shrugged. Chakotay leaned forward and rested his forearms on his thighs, cradling the warm mug in his hands as he gazed out of the windows. He had spent so long dreading whenever he looked out of a window that to willingly look at one now was unnerving. But _Spirits_ , was it good to see the stars - even if he couldn’t quite convince himself that it was real. Half-believing it was better than nothing, though, and it went a long way towards easing the ache in his chest.

“I never saw the stars when I was with them.”

Greg’s voice was soft but steady, and Chakotay stilled. He didn’t dare to look back at the man, as though any movement might scare him off. Greg never spoke of his time with the Borg. The only details Chakotay knew about those three hundred years came from Greg’s medical file, which he’d only looked over once Greg gave him express permission.

Broken arm in 2267; third-degree burns in 2134; shattered femur in 2098. There were half a dozen injuries in that file, all from Greg’s encounters with alien species who resisted the assimilation - better than others, at any rate, but not ultimately successful. Greg had been repaired each time and returned to duty, until he was found drifting in space a little over eighteen months ago.

_ Borg drone,  _ not Greg . It took Chakotay a little longer than was normal to make the correction, and he mentally kicked himself for it. He was usually better than that. Greg wasn’t the one who had committed those awful crimes; the Borg drone who used his body was responsible for that. Chakotay wasn’t sure if Greg was even able to bring harm to a Tarkalian fly. He might have been a police officer in his former life, but nowadays Greg wouldn’t even look at a phaser if he didn’t have to. Tuvok, on more than one occasion, had offered to give Greg lessons in tactical maneuvers, and Chakotay knew that he was interested in bringing Greg into some of his security officer training sessions. Tuvok knew quality when he saw it.

But Greg wanted nothing to do with the profession that had once been his whole life. He worked in Sickbay now because he wanted to heal; to fix. Partly, Chakotay knew, this was to honor the husband he had lost.

Mostly, though, he had a feeling Greg was looking for retribution; for forgiveness. He was looking to be absolved of the crimes he had committed against his will. And this was the only way he knew how.

“I didn’t know,” Chakotay said at length. He realized too late that the silence had dragged on for much too long, and he kicked himself for it. Again.

“How could you have been expected to know?” Greg asked reasonably. He rested a hand on the back of Chakotay’s neck, stroking the short hairs there. “Why do you dye this?”

“What?” Chakotay blinked at the non-sequitur and looked back at him. Greg ran his fingers through Chakotay’s hair.

“I like the grey,” he said simply.

“Oh,” Chakotay said blankly. “I’ll - I’ll keep that in mind.”

Greg offered him another small smile, and Chakotay looked back at the stars.

“I never saw the stars on that cube,” Greg said matter-of-factly. “There weren’t any windows. And I didn’t often go out - at least, not that I can recall. My memory of those years isn’t the best. So compared to that, this… this is a vacation.”

Chakotay snorted. “That’s what Harry said in the meeting this afternoon.”

“Maybe he has a point. It’s going to take two years for us to cross this expanse. Think about that, Chakotay. Two years without the threat of anyone attacking us? Two years without you getting sent on an away mission where you could very well lose your life? I’d willingly accept tedium in exchange for that.” Greg ran his fingers through Chakotay’s hair again, and Chakotay closed his eyes. _Spirits_ , he was tired. But it was hard to willingly go to sleep anymore. He couldn’t trade one oblivion for another. “What did the Captain say this afternoon?”

Chakotay shook his head. Normally, he didn’t talk about his conversations with Kathryn with the others, not even Greg, but lately his reserves had been at an all-time low. It was difficult to maintain his temper with the senior staff, let alone keep his confidences and secrets.

He was so damn _tired_.

“She sends her regards to the crew,” Chakotay said bitterly. Greg didn’t respond to that, and so he went on, filling the silence. “She says that being out in this expanse has given her too much time to think. She realises that she made an error in judgment five years ago. She was short-sighted and - and selfish, and she stranded us all here in this quadrant without taking into consideration anyone else’s feelings on the matter. She decided that saving one alien species was more important than her people - what was left of them, anyway.”

“You don’t agree with that.”

“I told her it wasn’t true,” Chakotay conceded. “I told her that our mission has been a success so far.”

Greg curled a hand around the back of Chakotay’s neck. The touch was grounding, and Chakotay let out a deep sigh.

“The only trouble is,” he said quietly, “she’s right. She’s - _fuck_ , Greg, she’s right. She abandoned us here. She chose a fucking dependent and _helpless_ species over the rest of us, and she stranded us here because - because she’s got a damned _superiority_ complex. She needs to be _needed_.”

Greg rubbed a hand down his spine.

“And if she hadn’t done that,” he said after a moment, “what would you have done?”

“What?”

“How would you have gotten home?” Greg pressed.

“We would have used the Array.”

“How?”

“We would have figured it out.”

“Would you have?” Greg’s hand came to rest on Chakotay’s thigh. “It wasn’t a guarantee. You might have failed to learn how to use the Array _and_ cost the Ocampa their lives.”

“But -”

Greg silenced him with a finger on his lips, and Chakotay swallowed the words he’d been about to say.

“A friend of mine once told me that indulging in hypotheticals was a waste of time and energy that was best spent elsewhere,” Greg said gently. He gave a small quirk of his lips. “Well, sort of. He actually said that it was foolish and idiotic, but I think he meant well. Point is, you don’t know how things might have turned out. You have no way of ever knowing. So don’t waste your time on it, because it’s never going to change things. You are _here_ , and now, and you have to make the most of it.”

Chakotay looked at his hands. It’d been six months since the first letters from home had started to arrive; six months since he’d learned about the fate of all the Maquis who had been left behind in the Alpha Quadrant. His friends and colleagues, and a few former lovers, had all perished -

_ No.  _ They’d been slaughtered. There was no other accurate word for it, but he was the ship’s first officer. Here in the Delta Quadrant, he couldn’t afford to be the Maquis leader that had stranded his crew here. If they were going to survive, he had to assume a role. He was a diplomat and a Starfleet officer, and he was responsible for holding their blended crews together.

To that end, he spent his days calling what happened to the Maquis a _tragedy_. As though it couldn’t have been prevented. As though it hadn’t been monstrous and horrific.

But in the privacy of his own thoughts - the ones that he only voiced to Greg, if he did at all - his Maquis brethren had been massacred.

And he had been left behind.

“I don’t know if I can,” he said at last. “I should’ve been there, Greg. I should’ve… fought with them.”

“Died with them.”

Chakotay met his gaze steadily. There was no judgment in Greg’s eyes; just the same, deep kindness that was always present. Greg’s capacity for caring was boundless, it seemed. Chakotay didn’t know where he found the energy.

“Yes,” he said. “I would have died with them, and gladly. I wish -”

Greg reached out and slid a hand into one of Chakotay’s own.

“Don’t finish that sentence,” he warned softly. “Don’t you ever think like that, Chakotay. There’s still _so much_ for you to do.”

“I’m not more important than they were,” Chakotay said vehemently.

“You are to me.”

The admission came so easily, like breathing, that it took Chakotay a moment to process it. Something seized in his chest, and he found himself blinking rapidly.

He never would have met Greg if not for Kathryn’s actions. He never would have met Greg if not for his own. He would be dead, most likely, if he’d never been brought to this quadrant against his will, and he never would have known this wonderful, _fantastic_ man.

Chakotay pressed Greg’s hand between both of his own.

“I don’t know why you put up with me, sometimes,” he admitted quietly. Greg squeezed his hand.

“The pain will pass,” he said softly. “It’ll fade to an ache and then, eventually, it won’t be there at all.”

Chakotay couldn’t help but snort. What an awful, impossible thing to contemplate. “I don’t know if I want it to.”

“Yeah,” Greg said quietly as he got to his feet, “that’ll change, too. Come on. You need sleep. Frankly, so do I.”

Practical to the last. Chakotay felt the corner of his mouth twitch, but his slight amusement was fleeting. He didn’t look forward to the night, or to sleep. Not anymore. Not since the stars had disappeared, and _Voyager_ had been swallowed by the impenetrable darkness. Sleep was just another level of the hell he had been living for fifty-three days.

It helped to have Greg at his side, that much was true, but it was only a small comfort. They weren’t much for touching while sleeping, but more and more often when they shared a bed Chakotay woke with his nose pressed into the back of Greg’s neck and an arm wrapped around his waist from behind. It was as though he subconsciously was seeking refuge from the dark.

This time, he didn’t even bother to wait for his subconscious to take over. He molded himself to Greg’s back the moment the other man slid into bed, and he pressed his face between Greg’s shoulder blades, closing his eyes just as Greg called for lights out.

“Might want to be on this side,” Greg said over his shoulder.

“No, thanks,” Chakotay muttered into Greg’s shirt. “M’fine.”

“Take a look at the windows.”

Chakotay grudgingly cracked open an eye, and then both of them flew open.

“How -”

“I’m a man of many talents,” Greg said dryly.

The star-dotted curtains hung in his bedroom, too, but with the lights out Chakotay saw that the stars actually stayed lit. They were glowing gently, and in the darkness the curtains blended in with the windows. It was as though he was truly looking out at the stars.

Greg rolled over onto his back. Chakotay rested his head just over the staccato beat of Greg’s heart and lay facing the brilliant windows. Greg rested a hand on his shoulder blade, the warmth of his palm bleeding through Chakotay’s shirt.

“The stars will come back, Chakotay,” he murmured, “and someday, you’ll be able to breathe again.”

Chakotay said nothing because he didn’t trust his voice. Greg seemed to understand nonetheless. He squeezed Chakotay’s shoulder once and then let out a slow sigh. He drifted off quickly that night, and his slow breathing soon lulled Chakotay into a light doze before he, too, tumbled off towards sleep.

The stars were still there in the morning.


End file.
